while I yawn...

Thank you...

:-|

This is truly a non-event as cell phones are really meant to do one thing... COMMUNICATE with another human being, not be a PDA, Music Player, Video Device, etc. Just another example of a device that will allow a person to shut themselves away from the rest of the planet. There is too much of this dreck around already. Will I want one? No. That pretty much precludes me from BUYING one ... and from Cingular? One of the WORST companies to deal with if you have a problem. Uh uh... no f'in way!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

They're going to pair their new iTunes phone with the worst possible cell service.....Cingu-less.

I would expect this first version to have minimal music features... probably a small capacity. There were some alleged product manuals for this product shown on a site recently and the thing that struck me was the apparent lack of headphone input. Why would people want to listen to music in one ear (or from tiny built in speakers)? Even if it does include a jack, I doubt it will cause many people to give up their iPods.

However if the capacity is similar to the Shuffles, it might be a nice option in a pinch, but the price, service and interface will all play a major role in its success.

Too bad it's not an Apple-designed phone.

must be one heckuva battery included. My Motorola phones have never lasted for more than 3-4 hrs of talk time - something people might still want to use a phone for. Still, someone will buy them...just to be cool. Me? I'll flip a few more shares of AAPL off the announcement.

entire effort will be ruined by the exceptionally S***** cingular service. overall the worst rated wireless service in the country. in 2 years (stuck in contract through work), all of us, who had a variety of phones (moto/nokia/sony-ericson), dropped almost every call we made. this was at home and traveling to major US markets.

however, took my same V600 to europe for 2 weeks, never dropped 1 call in 3 countries! so it's not the phone.

finally company switched to verizon... no one has dropped a call yet, except 1 person who has really bad reception at her house, foothills on the back of a mountain.

bad move apple!

I've never had a problem with Cingular... O.o

I'll echo the sentiments of those who hate Cingular. Here in Chicago if you just mention you have Cingular to someone else you'll get groans of sympathy. I can't even drive down the interstate without dropping a call within the first minute. And forget about even trying to make a call from inside. I've also had times when my phone had nearly full signal strength indicated, but a call from my home phone in the next room never came though...went straight to voice mail.

So bad move on Apple's part to partner with them. Maybe Cingular offered Apple huge concessions in order to allow them to dangle a shiny new object in front of their cusomters to distract them their horrible PHONE service. Or maybe they were the only carrier willing to let the phone talk directly to a computer to download songs. Heaven knows their network isn't reliable enough to actually download anything that way!

I can't speak one way or the other as to Cingular's service, but I will say that Apple likely had absolutely nothing to do with that choice; this would be the result of negotiations between Motorola and Cingular.

Besides, this is all conjuncture at this point. Nobody knows for that it'll only be Cingular offering this phone. Or that there will even been a phone. Look out for the iPod noggin, I tell you!

Well, if you read the other news stories about this, Cingular is just the first one to jump on the wagon--a German cell phone company is saying they will have iTunes capabilities by Christmas. When iTunes started, it was Mac only. Now its cross-platform. iTunes had a few hundred thousand songs available, now it has over a million. No one said this was an exclusive deal, and I can't see Apple doing that, unless its temporary. Apple may want to start with a single company, see how it grows, learn from it, and then add to it, as it and all companies generally do when entering a new market. Apple may also have insisted on some sort of sweetheart deal and for now, only Cingular was willing to bite (e.g. rumors of an Apple-branded cell phone).